Pride and Prejudice is a romance novel that follows the same formula as every other romance novel every written; girl meets boy, girl gets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy. It is written in the omniscient narrator point of view. I rather liked that because so few books today are truly written in that style. It gives a very clear idea of how it needs to be done. She is able to look into the thoughts of each character at will. Yet in order to build some kind of suspense and keep the reader engaged she does not tell us everything at once. I especially like the brief look she took at Lydia. In just a few pages we learn all we need to know about this loud, self absorbed teen aged spendthrift whose whole joy in life is chasing men. She is what today we call boy crazy and it doesn’t take us long to find that out. No we don’t see her running around after men in a chapter written from Lydia’s point of view. We listen to her relate to her sisters in a carriage where she talks and talks and talks. We see her relate to her family and she tells us almost all we need to know about her in those few pages. Further, it only takes a few lines to learn what we need to know about the main characters parent’s marriage.
I felt exhilarated when I finished the last page. I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters and I haven’t missed them. I didn’t keep reading because I couldn’t wait to find out what happened. I kept reading because I had decided I would finish this book. I wish that the language had been updated because words don’t have the same connotations as they did in the 17th and 18th centuries. I did learn that the qualities of pride and prejudice go together. It shows how snap judgments brought on by either pride or prejudice cloud peoples judgment. It also shows these two qualities transcend social class to the detriment of us all.